1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to providing information content. More particularly, the present invention relates to providing computer mediated information content.
2. Background Art
The famous sailor's lament “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink” is equally apropos of the sea of information continuously competing for our attention as a result of advances made possible by modem communication technology. Much as the historical seafarer was tormented by juxtaposition of the proximity of so much water with the rationing of his very limited supply of its drinkable variety, individuals living in the present information age are sometimes frustrated in their attempts to obtain personally timely and interesting items of information, due to the ocean of information content with which they find themselves inundated. For both the metaphorical mariner and the modem information seeker, the problem is not the absence of a resource, but rather the need to distill that which is desirable and needed from that which may be plentiful, but embodies little value to the user.
Extracting information that is personally desirable from the vastly greater body of information that is not, can, however, be a demanding undertaking, and may often become overwhelming. The active efforts required in order to differentiate among alternative items of information to distinguish value from superficiality, and timeliness from obsolescence, may leave the inquiring mind spent, and in the process, squander one of our least abundant resources—time. In short, the potential wealth of information continuously available to us is rendered far less useful than it could be, due to its being subsumed and made unrecognizable by its own abundance.
A reactionary and largely unproductive approach to solving the problems associated with information overload, is to disengage from its sources and turn away from the stresses and confusions they create, in the optimistic faith that the more prosaic mechanisms that have served adequately well in the past, will continue to alert us to critically needed or highly desirable news in the future. While perhaps effective in avoiding the personal stresses created by having to actively contend with available information, that approach is at the very least intellectually regressive, and deprives us of the potential benefits available from a selective harvesting of the wealth of information provided by our hard earned technological advances.
A more balanced conventional approach to solving the problems of information overload utilizes computer based information management tools to sort and summarize available items of information, by subject matter or otherwise. This approach allows an information seeker to more rapidly analyze an information item and evaluate the likelihood that it may be relevant or desirable based on that information seeker's personal interests. A significant disadvantage of this widely implemented conventional solution, however, is that it requires the information seeker to engage individual items in a deductive analytical process, albeit a more focused and streamlined one. By requiring an information seeker to read and absorb a digest or synopsis of the information content, this present approach continues to impose significant burdens on his or her time and cognitive resources.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a solution that allows an information seeker to engage information content in a less analytical way, thereby enabling a more intuitive recognition of information content having enhanced desirability.